


the place in our hearts where we hide

by gatcombepark



Category: British Royal Family
Genre: F/M, i love suffering and dying and being dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-19
Updated: 2017-10-19
Packaged: 2019-01-19 16:26:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12413751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gatcombepark/pseuds/gatcombepark
Summary: March, 1989. The secret of Anne and Tim's affair is out. It seems like the whole world is falling apart. Will they ever even get to see each other again?





	the place in our hearts where we hide

Tim slid the record out of the sleeve and gently placed it on the turntable. He dropped the needle into the track and collapsed onto the couch as the familiar piano started to play. Today had been a whirlwind.

He had woken up in his palace apartment to find the Sun (damn them) was claiming they had love letters written to Princess Anne, by someone other than her husband. Everyone from the morning shows to the palace staff was abuzz wondering who the author might be, but Tim didn't have to wonder. He knew exactly who had written them: him. He had sat in this very room, his pen barely able to keep up with the adoration he poured out onto the page.

And now someone had slipped them to a fucking red-top, which in a surprising show of magnanimity had passed them along to Scotland Yard to determine whether Anne was in any danger rather than immediately printing them. Anne was, of course, perfectly safe - this had certainly been an affair of mutual consent! - but in order to prove it and calm things down, he had had to admit to having written the letters. Officially. In a statement from the press office.

Obviously, his career was over. He had packed up his desk, left a resignation letter with the Queen's secretary, and caught the first train back to Winchester, in hopes that the quieter setting would help him clear his head and come up with a plan for the days to follow.

Days without Anne.

He only wished he had been able to tell her goodbye before he left. But she was at Gatcombe today, and there was no way that he could have stayed under the radar all the way out to Stroud and back, not now that his face was all over the news.

_And I guess that's why they call it the blues  
Time on my hands, could be time spent with you_

Elton John and his piano banged out a fairly accurate summary of Tim's sorrows.

He wasn't looking forward to the lonely days to come.

She had come into his life like a whirlwind. From the moment he first saw her, he had been a complete and total goner. He certainly hadn't considered himself unhappy before they met, but the three years since then had been filled with so much more meaning and depth that it seemed he had been born into a completely new life.

The realization that he had just given that up, voluntarily walked away from it, made him desperate for a stiff drink.

But he had to do it. To keep Anne safe, to keep those vultures in the press from hounding her for days or weeks or months until his name came out anyway, he had to just step up and take the fall.

He could get through life without her, somehow, as long as he knew she was safe.

The needle on the record player slipped into the runout groove, going around and around in the same circle as Tim turned the situation over and over in his mind.

There had been no other way, hadn't there? This was the choice he had to make, his only real option, no matter how much it hurt.

He sighed and stood up and poured himself a glass of wine and walked over to the turntable and restarted the record.

The needle hissed as it ran over the well-worn grooves in the vinyl. Anne sat curled on the couch with a blanket and a glass of wine. Even when you're royalty, it's not every day that you're the lead story on the evening news. But she had been today. Moreover, she had found out that Tim chose to admit he had written the letters when the newscaster read the Press Office's statement out on air.

Surely he knew this meant the end of his career at the palace. Mummy and Daddy were fond of him, but there was simply no way they would be willing to keep him on after a PR disaster of this scale. Couldn't he have waited until she came back to London to make this kind of move? Or at least called to say goodbye?

She supposed, perhaps, that he had felt pressed to act immediately for some reason. He certainly was always honorable - couldn't even bring himself to actually consummate the affair because of how guilty he felt about it, only justifying the letter writing and the time they shared with the knowledge that he loved her desperately and Mark (as she repeatedly assured him) didn't care for her at all anymore...

Those letters. This whole thing was her fault, for being stupid enough to leave the letters in her desk. Not all of them - not even close - and certainly not the racier ones, but clearly enough to make a story. She left them there to read through as a pick up whenever she felt sad or lonely or overwhelmed. How unfortunate, then, that she didn't have them to hand now. They would certainly be useful.

 _Just stare into space_  
_Picture my face in your hands_  
_Live for each second without hesitation_  
_And never forget I'm your man_

The song had come on the radio one day while she was over at his house. She had mentioned that it reminded her of them, and the next time she saw him, he had bought a copy for both of them. Listen to it, he had said, whenever you miss me and wish we could be together. I'll do the same.

The record was probably going to get worn out, now.

Tears welled up in her eyes.

Was there something, anything, she could do to change this? To somehow step in and keep him from losing his career in the Navy, not just banished from the Palace but pinned to a low-profile desk jockey job until they could quietly push him out? To keep him from sharing that lead headline with her, harassed by press wherever he went without bodyguards or any general sense of decorum to keep them under control?

He didn't deserve to end up like this.

All he had done was love her.

**Author's Note:**

> (thankfully, we know everything turns out okay for them - the queen basically tears up that resignation and Tim finishes the normal term of secondment for an equerry, they continue to see one another, and once Mark is revealed to have fathered a child out of wedlock, Anne finally has a concrete reason to divorce him and marry Tim. All's well that ends well.)


End file.
